ROMANCE: SHIFTER: Shifter to the Max Collection (Dragon, Bear, Wolf and Panther Shifter Romances) (Paranormal Fantasy Romance Collection)

by C. J. Ayers

  “Here goes my ass,” she muttered, shoveling sawdust through the air like confetti or fake snow—it fell slowly to the ground, catching the sparse light. It was probably her imagination, but she could almost hear them on the other side of town, chasing Jake. Was he still alive? Had they caught him already?

  When she was coughing sawdust, Elie ran out front. She crouched behind the Outback, which she had parked next to the outlet farthest from the mill.

  “I sure hope this place has good insurance,” Elie moaned. “Sorry in advance, Dad.”

  She plugged in the extension cord.

  Nothing. Just dark, still, night. Elie peered over the hood of her car.

  Somewhere in the mill’s depths, the stars aligned and a spark caught the floating particles of dust—the explosion was spectacular.

  It lit the night like dawn. A deafening boom, like being inside a drum, filled the air with almost physical presence, as heat shoved the world aside to make a place for the blossoming column of fire that unfurled from the mill’s ruined roof.

  Even hiding behind the car, Elie was thrown backwards. Her ears rang. Had she turned herself deaf?

  Then the debris started to fall; Elie scrambled back inside the Outback and swerved out of the mill lot; everyone in Colorado must’ve heard that, much less Hemford. They’d be showing up any second, and whatever else happened, she mustn’t be here at the scene of the crime when they did.

  She took the long way around to reach the base of operations; it had worked, to her relief. Everyone from Hemford was streaming back through town towards the mill, to save what they could. The fire siren wailed pitifully, and Elie watched it go, relieved.

  “How far’d you guys get?” she asked a Fish and Game hat. He sighed.

  “We almost had him. This is one smart bear, but we almost cornered him—then he slipped out, headed toward Utah, for how fast he was booking it.”

  Elie’s heart leapt; he was headed towards the meeting place.

  “That’s a shame,” she shrugged. “Next time, you’ll get him. He might have tried to respond; Elie didn’t stay long enough to hear.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The sun was rising; on the western side of the Rockies, it would be dark for a while, yet. Elie locked the Outback and set off around the shower hut with a blanket and Jake’s pants. They had come here with friends a lifetime ago, and it seemed that she still knew the way.

  There was a rocky little trail here. It led down into a gully, a pleasant little place to picnic and plan meetings of all kinds. Even this kind.

  “Jake?” Elie called softly over the trickle of water. A stream that had broken off a larger river up the mountain came tumbling over a rock sheet here, forming a pool just deep enough to wade in before moving on.

  By the pool, a still figure lay supine. Elie ran.

  “Jake!”

  At her yell, he opened his eyes. He hadn’t been shot, Elie was sure of that, at least. She scanned him with her eyes. He was dirty and scraped up, but seemed whole.

  “Elie?”

  “Jake, I think it worked,” she said as she covered him with the blanket. “Fish and Game thinks you ran to Utah. I think they might stop hunting you, now.”

  “Elie,” he groaned weakly. “Did you blow up the mill?”

  “Why… why do you ask?”

  “I can still smell the burnt sawdust on the wind.”

  She winced. “I’m sure the insurance will cover it, right?”

  Jake closed his eyes. “Looks like I’m laid off for a while.”

  “Jake,” she murmured, “I thought you were dead, you idiot. You had me worried sick. They said they almost had you. Now can I say what I want to say?”

  He shook his head. Elie smacked his shoulder lightly. “Why not?”

  “It was me,” Jake whispered. His voice sounded like he’d eaten glass dust; he looked up at her. “I’m the one that killed my Mom.”

  Elie stilled. “I… I know, Jake. I can put two and two together.”

  His jaw clenched as he watched her face. “It was an accident. It was the first time—I couldn’t control it back then—”

  Elie shushed him; the sun was finally touching the treetops overhead. It would be full daylight by the time they got back to Hemford. “Jake you can’t hold on to that. And you can’t expect me to hold on to that.”

  “I just wanted you to know,” he went on. “It was the only thing I hadn’t told you… I needed you to know.”

  “Well, I know,” she agreed. Elie leaned down and kissed him. “And I love you still. Now let’s go home—I hear there’s been an explosion at the mill.”

  Epilogue

  It was enrollment day.

  Elie looked up at her school doubtfully.

  “Might as well get this over with,” she said. She turned to Jake, who was sitting in the passenger seat. “You sure you don’t want to go back to Hemford?”

  He shrugged. “Until they rebuild that mill, I’m out of a job. I might as well live here with you. It’s only fair you should put me up, since you’re the one who made me unemployed.” He grinned at her through his beard, and Elie shoved him.

  “Fine, fine.” They got out of the car. Elie carried a bag today, full of papers—she hated paperwork, but it was a necessary evil. “It’s only two more semesters.”

  “You were thinking of quitting with only two more semesters to ‘til your BS?”

  “It took me seven years to get this far.”

  “Oh.” Jake put an arm around her waist as they walked through the entryway. “Well, hopefully this’ll only take one more. Then you can start your career as a social worker, or whatever you had in mind.”

  Elie nodded. “I was thinking down those lines. But maybe I should consider a major switch.”

  Jake scoffed. “To what?”

  “How about vet assistant?”

  They entered a crowd of students then, so Jake had to satisfy himself with the knowledge that he’d make her pay later. Once they got back to her apartment.

  He smiled and hoped her housing had thick walls.

  THE END

  LOVING THE ALPHA

  STORY DESCRIPTION

  Curvy Kira Bentley is smart, beautiful, frightened and alone. She is a freshly cursed werewolf, and clearly ignorant on the subject of what's happening to her. As if that weren’t bad enough, she can’t seem to avoid her sexy English professor, either inside or outside of the classroom, and not only does Professor Sawyer Donovan have looks to die for, he also invokes feelings in her unlike any Kira has ever experienced before.

  The last thing Sawyer Donovan expected was to find a pretty she-wolf in his English class. A ruggedly handsome young English professor at a prestigious university, the solitary werewolf has enough trouble dodging the unwanted attention of his female students without deliberately seeking one out. Yet, Professor Donovan’s sense of honor demands he shelter and guide his student in the transformation that she’s experiencing.

  When he vows to reach out to her through any means necessary… even calling her into his office at inconvenient hours and detaining her after class, what he isn’t planning on are his wolf’s strong insistence on his young protégé being his mate.

  As the full moon draws nearer, and student and professor find themselves reluctantly drawn to one another, can Sawyer fight his growing attraction to the one woman he knows he can't have? Can Kira, convince Sawyer to give in to forbidden passion, if only just this once?

  What will happen when Sawyer reveals the secret he has been guarding - that the date Kira was mysteriously bitten aligns a little too perfectly with his last blackout?

  CHAPTER 1

  There were certain students who attracted notice.

  As a young male professor at Rider University, he had expected, even prepared, for this. It was something advisors went over discreetly, and something that was brought up again and again in staff meetings, though never expressly named. There will be students, went the school of thought, who you wi
ll want to look at more than the others. Don't look at them more than the others.

  Sawyer Donovan was looking at the girl strategically stationed in the back of his classroom toward the window. He had seen her around campus before now, in snatched moments when he shouldn't have been looking, but a man would have to be dead not to notice her: she was a natural blonde of average height, with long, loping legs and a devastatingly athletic body. She was a freshman, he knew, otherwise she wouldn't be in his class. He had noticed the way the male students perked up when she entered, late, and took a seat alone in the back. He had noticed the way they deflated, too, upon being passed over.

  There was no denying that the girl—she had responded to the name Bentley, Kira when he had read it off his chart—was beautiful. Donovan was certain he was the only (relatively) young male in the classroom glad to have her sequestered in the back. It meant he wouldn't have to look at her as often. It meant he wouldn't have to notice.

  Because there was something else about Kira Bentley that drew his attention to her, something that he wanted to ignore, desperately. Feelings of sexual attraction he could deal with, had dealt with, before—but what attracted Professor Donovan to his student was something very different. Something horrible.

  He recognized the bags beneath her eyes. He recognized the weight loss; the unwashed hair; the woodland scratches she tried to conceal beneath her sweatshirt, but made themselves apparent every time she shifted and her sleeves rode up her wrists or her hood fell back from her neck. If he hadn't noticed the little details already, he would have sensed her in an instant: her pheromones were, to him, nearly overpowering in the small room.

  He didn't remember this about her before the break. When he had passed her then in the cafeteria, or on the footbridge as strangers, he had not smelled a fellow wolf.

  She had been bitten. Likely in the past month. The physical signs seemed to indicate that she had already undergone her first change.

  The timing was too perfect, and dread pooled like cold standing water in the pit of his stomach. But Donovan had a class to teach, the subject of which was decidedly not werewolves. He turned from the rows of expectant eyes to write his name on the board.

  "I'm Professor Donovan," he introduced himself to the class. "And this semester I'll be your guide through English 101."

  "Aren't you a bit young to be a professor?" a female student more toward the front asked without putting her hand up. It was usually the first question to be voiced.

  "If you'll turn to page two of the syllabus," Donovan continued. "You'll find that I have already addressed this concern. I turned twenty-eight in December, for those interested. Belated birthday presents are welcome, though they will have no effect on your final grade."

  A few of his students groaned, at least half of them in response to his deliberately lame attempt at humor. Donovan had a great sense of humor, he just enjoyed hearing their vocalizations of pain more.

  Kira Bentley said nothing.

  "You'll notice on that same page that I outline my philosophy on tardiness," Donovan continued, raising his eyes from beneath his brows as he continued to track the girl's nonresponse. "Lateness by my students will not be excused. Starting today."

  Bentley raised her brown-gold eyes from a continued spot of interest on her desk to meet his stare; when she saw the direction he was gazing, a muscle in her face tightened almost imperceptibly. Her look of veiled distress her cheekbones more pronounced. Leave it to the young and beautiful to make the effects of the curse look good.

  Donovan spent the remainder of the hour going over the rest of the syllabus. It was an easy first week for his students; it should have been an easy first week for him. But nothing about English 101 was going to be easy now that there was another wolf in the room. He would have preferred the proverbial elephant at this point.

  The analog clock wound down the hour, and his students rose, grappling with their books and backpacks and putting out hands to introduce themselves to one another. Kira Bentley didn't take part in the overtures, and instead moved along the back wall in an attempt to slip quietly out the door.

  He was half-tempted to ignore her. He should just let her go, and figure things out on her own the way he had. He could be lenient with her attendance, even her grades, to help make navigating her newfound shifterhood easier; he could remain a removed presence all the while. He should just stay out of it.

  But he couldn't. He had pursued a career as an educator because he believed in taking a positive, active role in the development of his students' lives. He couldn't let the one who might need him most slip out of reach because confronting her would be uncomfortable.

  He put up a hand to her, and Bentley froze in the doorway as if she had been expecting it. He feigned interest with his seating chart as she approached his desk.

  "Miss Bentley, I believe I mentioned my policy on tardiness?"

  "It won't happen again, professor." She cast her eyes from him and looked longingly toward the exit. Donovan sat back and removed his glasses, retiring them to the far corner of his desk.

  "Rough night?" he asked her.

  The girl bristled, before shooting a quick glance around her to see if anyone had heard him. With the exception of a few stragglers, the classroom had nearly completely emptied by this point. "Excuse me?"

  "I'm intimating that you were out all night," he said patiently. Kira Bentley's eyes narrowed, flashing at him like twin burnished coins, and he thought he could see some of the wolf rearing up inside her.

  "I don't smoke. I don't drink. And I would appreciate it if you kept your baseless accusations to yourself," she said. She was more articulate than he had expected for a freshman, and completely justified in making her preferences known; her confidence was on par with that of other, older gorgeous women he had met, but he knew what she was feeling on the inside. She was terrified. English 101 was a core requirement, and she needed to do well in his estimation for him to open the door for her to more advances courses.

  "Let's not start this semester off on the wrong foot," Donovan suggested. He rose from behind his desk to collect his things; Kira Bentley didn't budge from where she stood, evidently waiting for him to show her where to put the right foot. "Come by my office tomorrow with lunch and I'll forget all about it."

  "Excuse me?" Bentley demanded again.

  He could almost find it in him to feel sorry for the additional toll this interview was taking on an already sick and stressed-out young woman, but he alone knew how necessary it was. He needed to establish a connection with her immediately, and the only way he was going to manage it was outside of a classroom. His office was the perfect place: it wasn't as off-putting as suggesting some place outside of campus, and he was almost always in there, anyway. They needed a scene change to get familiar, and fast, if he stood a chance of helping her at all before her next full moon phase. They had less than a month.

  "See you at noon. Don't be late," he added as he brushed past her. While his hearing was preternatural, Donovan couldn't claim to have heard the internal scream that Kira Bentley was surely emitting. He contented himself with imagining it all the same.

  If his occupation prevented him from flirting with the pretty girl, making her life miserable would have to be second best.

  CHAPTER 2

  "This isn't quaint or quirky. This is blackmail."

  Kira Bentley was standing in the doorway of her least favorite professor's office. While she wanted to make her opinion clear, she was also holding a takeaway bag from one of the sandwich vendors in the quad.

  Professor Donovan—as if she knew, or cared to know, his first name—glanced up from grading a stack of papers, although she couldn't shake the distinct impression that he had known she was there all along. She supposed it was possible he had heard her coming down the hallway. He was wearing his glasses, although he never seemed to wear them when he was addressing the glass, leading her to believe that he was farsighted. Kira hadn't been farsighted herself u
ntil very recently, but she was afraid to go to the optometrist to get a prescription. She didn't know what an eye doctor might do if he suspected she could now see half a mile in every direction.

  With or without glasses, Professor Donovan was incredibly good-looking. His hair was that silver-brown color that his cherished literature would have described as "mouse-brown", although that wasn't quite right to Kira's mind. It matured him without giving him any indication of the early onset of gray hair. He might have stood a better chance at fitting in with his older colleagues if he wore it shorter, but it reached to his strong jawline, and he kept it swept back behind slightly-pronounced ears. The aforementioned jawline, the one that drove Kira's fellow freshman females crazy upon sight, was overshadowed by a deliberately-maintained stubble that accentuated his disaffected image.

  The pale eyes that regarded her from behind the glasses were deep-set, and probably a breathtaking gray, but Kira had only ever seen them look at her with an infuriating twinkle reflected in their depths. As if they shared some great secret or joke, when the reality was that she was the punchline. No wonder girls of every age made themselves crazy about him; the amused, carefully-guarded look on his face gave him the distinct appearance of flirting, when in reality that impression couldn't have been further from the truth.

  "You're not helping your case, Bentley. Well, maybe you are," he amended when she moved to his desk and deposited his sack lunch. "How did you know roast beef was my favorite?"

  "Who said anything about bringing you roast beef?" That had been her selection, of course, but it seemed weird to her that he would know that. Professor Donovan ignored her in favor of opening his spoils. The crinkling of the paper was almost painfully loud to Kira; it was strange, and borderline debilitating, the sounds that could invade her mind and break her concentration now. She couldn't deal with the enhanced hearing in the same way she couldn't deal with her new eyesight. Satisfied that she had delivered on the terms of their agreement, she turned to go.